Joe Rogan is bad for MMA.

Some people like him, some hate him. Most reasons are valid for either side. That's fine. However, after last night it hit me that he may be doing more harm for MMA than he thinks.

To Rogan, the fighter he likes should always win. He doesnt like every fighter nor does he have a favorite in each fight, he however does seem to go for a certain fighter in every big fight. The problem though, is that he's so bias, that his fighter could be getting utterly destroyed for 15 minutes, yet every minute he'll go out of his way to praise that fighter, while completely ignoring what the fighter he doesnt care about is doing. Last night Clay Guida completely dominated Anthony Pettis the entire fight yet all Rogan wanted to talk about was phantom submission attempts and 360 back kicks that were wildy inaccurate. The problem then arises that since most casual fans who watch the events think Rogan knows what he's talking about, they think Pettis was actually competitive and had gripes when he lost. If you were to just sit and listen to the commentary, you'd think that Guida was doing nothing the entire fight with Pettis nearly winning every 30 seconds with some exotic submission. However if your eyes are open during the fight, you see two guys going back and forth on the ground trying to get dominant positions with Guida essentially forcing the fight while Pettis was on his back trying wrist control and so forth. IMO, the fight was great. It showed two fighters with equal offense and defense in the ground game. Guida tried his best to get some ground and pound while Pettis tried to maneuver Guida around to try and lock in a submission. Neither however got around to their goal as often as they wanted. However because Guida wasnt able to completely dominate Pettis, all you heard was Pettis this and Pettis that.

Generally that's ok and i've gotten used to that. But when that fighter literally has zero shot at winning and Rogan is still nuthugging him, it imo is putting fans in a hard place. Not every fan is a hardcore fan. Most are just casual fans who catch it when its on tv or at a bar. Not one's who watch TUF, watch DREAM, Strikeforce, Titan, MFC, or the other various organizations around. They're just the ones who know that Brock Lesnar is a badass and that GSP is unstoppable. So when Rogan is showing extreme bias, it gives the casual fan the impression that so and so is winning and should have won.

What also hurts is Rogans intent on bashing new fans. Every single time someone goes to the ground and someone boos, he does his best to berate the fans who find that fighting style boring. "If these fans were educated, they're realize there's real action going on". Why take digs at the audience or fans watching tv? How is that good for the sport. How is acting superior and condescending going to help the sport grow? There's a reason every other legitimate sport's announcers are trained to be unbiased. They arent support to favor team A over team B. They arent supposed to let their fandom overtake their professionalism and dictate how they announce. Rogan however doesn't do that. He even admits he doesnt care if people don't like his opinion. The problem with that though is what if people stop watching fights due to him? It sounds absurd, but it can and has happened. Sometimes commentating and announcer can be so bad that you just stop caring about what's going on. If i was Dana White, i'd do my best to bring in Michael Schiavelo and Frank Trigg to cover fights. Both are infinitely more knowledgable than Rogan and both are about as professional as they can be. Yes they joke about sex and so forth, but they'll never force a fan to side with them or they're stupid. They just call the fight and use funny terms like "he's taking more knocks than a jehovas witness" and so forth.

I just feel that the more influence Rogan has on the sport the more problems he's going to cause. And since the UFC is the top dog by far, most MMA fans will take Rogan for a genius in the MMA world and that if Fighter A is this supreme badass who ends up losing, the fight was obviously rigged.

Maybe i'm just finding something on nothing, but i for one have had enough of the lopsided commentary. The UFC needs a change and i think Rogan should be the first to go.